Reel Classics: The Big Chill

The Reel Classic for today, The Big Chill, focus­es on the gath­er­ing of for­mer col­lege class­mates at a house in Beaufort, South Carolina.  They haven’t seen each oth­er for some time.  However, the cir­cum­stance bring­ing them togeth­er is not pleas­ant as they are gath­ered to attend the funer­al of one of their friends. 

Harold (Kevin Kline) and Sarah (Glenn Close) are a hap­pi­ly mar­ried cou­ple who are host­ing the gath­er­ing in their home.  Sarah is a suc­cess­ful doc­tor, and Harold owns a shoe com­pa­ny.   They own the house in Beaufort where the friends have gath­ered.  Michael (Jeff Goldblum) is a reporter for a mag­a­zine focus­ing on celebri­ties.  He aspires to more seri­ous writ­ing, but his edi­tor is not inter­est­ed.  He is also a noto­ri­ous flirt with a quirky sense of humor. 

Sam (Tom Berenger) is an actor with a very suc­cess­ful tele­vi­sion show.  In the past he had a strong attrac­tion to Karen (JoBeth Williams).  She had been a writer in the past but is now mar­ried to Richard (Don Galloway), a suc­cess­ful, con­ser­v­a­tive busi­ness man.  They have two sons who are fas­ci­nat­ed with Sam and his TV show, but the mar­riage is not a hap­py one for Karen.  She still has feel­ings for Sam. 

Nick (William Hurt) was a radio psy­chol­o­gist but his expe­ri­ences as a vet­er­an of the Vietnam War have left him phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly wound­ed.  He has turned to drugs as his way to cope.  His expe­ri­ences have also left him quite cynical.

Meg (Mary Kay Place) had at one time been a pub­lic defend­er but is now a suc­cess­ful real estate attor­ney.  She is sin­gle and sees no prospects of a rela­tion­ship, but des­per­ate­ly wants to have a child and be a mother. 

Chloe (Meg Tilly) was not one of the orig­i­nal group of friends.  She was the girl­friend of Alex and is much younger than the oth­ers gath­ered.  She and Alex were in love and liv­ing in the base­ment of Harold and Sarah’s house.  They were in the process of ren­o­vat­ing an old house when Alex died.

And final­ly, we have Alex (Kevin Kostner), who was a trou­bled soul and died by sui­cide.  His body was found by Chloe.  The only time we see Alex is in his cof­fin.  (More about that later.) 

We meet these var­i­ous folks at Alex’s funer­al, and they are invit­ed to stay for a few days with Harold and Sarah.  Karen’s hus­band, Richard, choos­es to return home, but Karen stays on.  We begin to get a more in-depth view of this group of friends and learn about who they are now and how they have changed from their col­lege days.  Though they all appear very suc­cess­ful and upper-mid­dle class (except for Nick), we learn of their var­i­ous dis­ap­point­ments and unhap­pi­ness with their lives.  Only Harold and Sarah seem to be hap­py with their lives. 

During the gath­er­ing, we see the group come togeth­er to cook din­ner, play flag foot­ball in the yard, and gath­er around the tele­vi­sion to watch the Michigan foot­ball game, rem­i­nisc­ing and reliv­ing the old days. The trou­bled Nick avoids the games, choos­es to go to the house Alex and Chloe were work­ing on, and sits for hours alone. He has become bit­ter about love and friendship. 

Also, dur­ing the stay togeth­er, we see some sex­u­al ten­sions arise and some mel­low­ing with a bit of recre­ation­al drug use.  We see them engag­ing in music and danc­ing and enjoy­ing each oth­er’s com­pa­ny.  By the time the friends part, we see some return­ing to their pre­vi­ous exis­tence, and some carv­ing out a new exis­tence for themselves. 

Lawrence Kasdan was both the direc­tor and co-writer (along with Barbara Benedek) of The Big Chill.  When asked to describe the film, he stat­ed, “The Big Chill deals with mem­bers of my gen­er­a­tion who have dis­cov­ered that not every­thing they want­ed is pos­si­ble, that not every ide­al they believed in has stayed in the fore­front of their inten­tions.  The Big Chill is about a cool­ing process that takes place for every gen­er­a­tion when they move from the out­ward-direct­ed, more ide­al­is­tic con­cerns of their youth to a kind of self-absorp­tion, a self-inter­est which places their per­son­al desires above those of the soci­ety or even an ideal.” 

Some of the actors offered their insights into the mean­ing of the film.  Mary Kay Place said, “When you’re in col­lege, you think you can do any­thing, be any­thing, accom­plish anything...Then sud­den­ly you reach a point where you’re set­tled into what you’re going to be, and once you real­ize it, every­thing stops.  Then the ques­tions begin.”  Tom Berenger said the film was about “that peri­od in life when you’re begin­ning to real­ize you have lim­i­ta­tions, that you will nev­er accom­plish cer­tain goals and dreams... Suddenly, you know you’re not a kid anymore.” 

Kasdan said the char­ac­ters were based on the peo­ple he lived with while attend­ing the University of Michigan. The stu­dents lived in co-ed hous­ing, where house­hold duties, includ­ing cook­ing, were shared. This also explains the friends’ pas­sion for Michigan foot­ball (with the excep­tion of Nick).

To help cre­ate the sense of com­mu­nal spir­it seen in the film’s inter­ac­tions, Kasdan brought the cast to Beaufort sev­er­al weeks before film­ing. Scenes were rehearsed, and evenings were spent togeth­er cook­ing, play­ing games, and hang­ing out. This effort helped to bring the cast and crew clos­er together. 

For those famil­iar with the movie, you know how essen­tial the music is to the film and the char­ac­ters.  Music from such artists as Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Rolling Stones, and The Band play through­out the film.  In an inter­view in 1984 in the  British mag­a­zine  Photoplay, Lawrence Kasdan said, “The 1960s were an incred­i­bly var­ied explo­sion of pop music.  For a lot of peo­ple in my gen­er­a­tion, rock ’n’ roll has­n’t since equaled that peri­od in terms of rich­ness or emo­tion­al impact.  The songs real­ly spoke to us, spoke to a lot of our con­cerns.  Harold (Kevin Kline), in whose home the pic­ture takes place, won’t allow any oth­er music in the house.  It’s not just back­ground to these peo­ple.  These songs mean some­thing very real and dif­fer­ent to each of the char­ac­ters.  It’s a strong ref­er­ence for them — a sense of mem­o­ry of that time.”

One of my favorite scenes is when the friends are gath­ered togeth­er, cook­ing and set­ting the table while singing along and danc­ing to the music being played. I am sure many of us have expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar scenes. 

Two sound­track albums for the film were pro­duced and released:  “The Big Chill Soundtrack” and “The Big Chill — More Songs From The Original Soundtrack.”  Both were very suc­cess­ful.  Due to copy­right issues, sev­er­al songs in the film did not appear on the orig­i­nal sound­track release, includ­ing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones, “The Weight” by The Band, and “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.  However, The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival did have their songs on the fol­low-up sound­track release. 

An inter­est­ing note here.  The Return of the Secaucus Seven, a film by John Sayles, was released in 1980.  Many thought it to be the inspi­ra­tion for The Big Chill as it has a sim­i­lar sto­ry­line about a gath­er­ing of for­mer col­lege friends who had been polit­i­cal activists.  However, Kasdan has stat­ed that he and Barbara Benedek were not famil­iar with the Sayles film when they began writ­ing the screen­play, and it was based on his own expe­ri­ences.  Sayles seems to agree.  In an inter­view, he stat­ed, “Even though the form of the movies and the plot are in some ways very close, they’re real­ly about very dif­fer­ent peo­ple, which is why I nev­er thought it was a rip-off.”   Though it did­n’t have the larg­er bud­get or sound­track of The Big Chill, I rec­om­mend you check it out.

Initially, a scene was filmed as a flash­back to a col­lege Thanksgiving scene.  It showed the friends gath­ered togeth­er fix­ing din­ner, and the friends inter­act­ing with Alex.  It was meant to be shown at the end of the film.  However, Kasdan did­n’t think it fit well and cut the scene.  Consequently, Alex is only seen as the body in the cof­fin.  To make up for delet­ing him from the film, Kasdan offered Kevin Costner the lead role in his next movie, Silverado (1985). 

When released in 1983, the film went to num­ber one in the box office charts.  Reviews were pos­i­tive.  The Guardian review­er wrote:  “The Big Chill is poignant with­out being cloy­ing.  The friends bond, cook togeth­er, and watch foot­ball togeth­er — all so authen­ti­cal­ly... eight friends find the anti­dote to life’s big chill:  each oth­er.”  Vincent Canby described the film in The New York Times as “a very accom­plished, seri­ous com­e­dy... it rep­re­sents the best of main­stream American film making.” 

The Critics Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes states:  “The Big Chill cap­tures a gen­er­a­tion’s grow­ing ennui with a ter­rif­ic cast, a hand­ful of per­cep­tive insights, and one of the decade’s best film soundtracks.” 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates The Big Chill at 7.1 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 69% and and Audience Score of 77%.  In seek­ing out free stream­ing sites I found it avail­able on the Roku Channel and Tubi.  There is also a copy of the DVD avail­able at the Clark County Public Library.

The Big Chill is a dec­la­ra­tion of the pow­er of friend­ship and con­nec­tion, and the pow­er of music with­in our lives.  It is a very pleas­ant way to spend a cou­ple of hours of your time — maybe even do a bit of rem­i­nisc­ing of your own. Enjoy! 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below, let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as the WinCity Voices Facebook page.